# Nine players who quietly defined the 2025 season

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-athletic-football-show-a-show-about-the-nfl-1365826/nine-players-who-quietly-defined-the-2025-season
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-athletic-football-show-a-show-about-the-nfl-1365826/nine-players-who-quietly-defined-the-2025-season.md
Podcast: [The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-athletic-football-show-a-show-about-the-nfl-1365826)
Published: 2026-06-11T07:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/the-athletic-football-show-a-show-about-the-nfl/episodes/nine-players-who-quietly-defined-the-2025-season
Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/681cc905bdc60241406b737f/e/6a29e2d17cf2fac32b7be409/media.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-athletic-football-show-a-show-about-the-nfl-1365826/episodes/nine-players-who-quietly-defined-the-2025-season
Duration seconds: 3024

## Resource

For every Will Anderson Jr. and Jaxon Smith-Njigba, there's a Robert Spillane and Parker Washington. In other words, for every superstar who clearly left his mark on a given season, there's a role player who also helped define what the league was, and were it could be going. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen highlight the players who quietly defined the 2025 season on this episode of The Athletic Football Show. Rundown: 0:00 Welcome to the show 3:14 Parker Washington 11:36 Byron Murphy II 19:00 AJ Barner 20:20 Colby Parkinson 28:15 Reed Blankenship & Evan Williams 34:49 Devon Witherspoon 41:45 Robert Spillane 46:30 Kamari Lassiter Host: Robert Mays Co-Host: Derrik Klassen Executive Producer: Michael Beller Senior Producer: Katy Duffy Social Producer: Scott Krinch Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social Follow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.social Follow Robert on X: @RobertMays Theme song: Haunted Written by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love Songs Courtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-athletic-football-show-a-show-about-the-nfl-1365826/episodes/nine-players-who-quietly-defined-the-2025-season/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-athletic-football-show-a-show-about-the-nfl-1365826/nine-players-who-quietly-defined-the-2025-season.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.